That one week in Seattle where every plane had the same weird problem

A few years back I was working a stretch out at Boeing Field, and for like five days straight almost every bird coming through had a bad connection on the same pin in the same connector on the autopilot computer. It was some kind of grounding issue that only showed up when the plane hit a certain vibration frequency. I must have re-pinned ten of those things that week. The weird part was each job took about two hours to track down because the intermittent fault would only pop up during a specific engine run test. My foreman kept saying "it's the same gremlin every time" and he was right. Anyone else ever run into a run of identical failures like that where it felt like the whole fleet had a hidden flaw?

2 comments

2 Comments

mark_cooper10d agoMost Upvoted

Honestly that sounds like one of those weird electrical ghosts that only shows up under perfect conditions. Had a similar thing with a rental car once where the radio would cut out every time I hit 55 mph on a curve. It took three trips back to the shop before a guy figured out a wire was rubbing against the chassis in a spot that only vibrated at that speed.

skyler_adams10d ago

You're really hanging onto that "electrical ghost" stuff huh. I mean yeah, sometimes cars have wiring issues, but comparing a rental car radio cutting out at 55 mph to a flight-critical autopilot system seems like a stretch. One is an annoyance, the other could actually get people killed. But sure, call it a ghost if it helps you sleep at night.